Dawn+Roe


 * SUMMARY: "Dawn," age 29, died from legal abortion complications in August of 1972.**

Dawn is one of the women Life Dynamics names on the "Blackmun Wall" of women killed by [|safe and legal abortion].

Dawn was 29 years old and 7 weeks pregnant when she underwent a legal abortion at a hospital in August of 1972.

Local anesthesia was administered and a suction abortion was performed. After the abortion, Dawn went into convulsions. Doctors at the abortion hospital, and at another hospital, attempted to resuscitate Dawn, to no avail.

Doctors believed that Dawn might have been given an overdose of local anesthetic. Strangely, during the autopsy, although the medical examiner found a significant amount of blood in Dawn's abdominal cavity, there was no evidence of a uterine perforation. Overall, the impression was that some reaction to the anesthesia had caused Dawn's death.

As you can see from the graph below, abortion deaths were falling dramatically before legalization. This steep fall had been in place for decades. To argue that legalization lowered abortion mortality simply isn't supported by the data.

LDI Sources: "Maternal deaths associated with paracervical block anesthesia," Berger, Tyler, Harrod, //American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology//, 118:8, April 1974, 1142-43

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